The Candlelighter

Simon Armitage (2007)

From Dove Cottage, I sloped out through the side gate
and climbed the corpse road past the coffin stone,
then curved through a mixed copse to a scree path
scored by rainwater into the hill's back.
I was hauled upward by a borrowed dog
on a makeshift leash, a yellow Labrador,
busy for every birdcall and blown leaf.
Over a hand-stacked wall, in the next fold,
under the driftwood bones of an old elm,
a red deer had dropped down from the high fell
with morning beaconed in its flaming horns.
With dawn-light cradled in its branching crown.
I stood in some blind spot of its dark eye,
and deer and dog were still and unaware
and stayed that way, divided by the wall,
wild stag and hunting hound in separate worlds,
before the deer pushed on through tinder thickets,
igniting the next wold. And the dog yawned.
Then I hacked up the gyhill to higher ground,
toward the hill's bare head, counting the dead
and the hikers striding along the ridge,
thinking of taking a drink from the tarn,
thinking of adding a new stone to the cairn.